As widely rumored in recent weeks, Amazon on Tuesday lifted the veil on its set-top box designed to challenge such living room streaming content heavyweights as Apple TV and Roku.

Fire TV is touted by Amazon as a "tiny box" that plugs into your HDTV for easy and instant access to Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, SHOWTIME, video rentals, and more.

Not surprisingly, Fire TV also brings photos, music, and games to the living room. The price tag? $99.

“Tiny box, huge specs, tons of content, incredible price—people are going to love Fire TV,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO. “Our exclusive new ASAP feature predicts the shows you’ll want to watch and gets them ready to stream instantly. And our open approach gives you not just Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video, but also Netflix, Hulu Plus, and more. On Fire TV you can watch Alpha House and House of Cards.”

One of the most innovative features is Voice search, which Amazon says "actually works." We're told that users can simply speak the name of a movie, TV show, actor, director, or genre into the remote, and that's it. The remote control has a built-in microphone.

Impressively, the device delivers a quad-core processor with over 3x the processing power of Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku 3. There's even a dedicated GPU, plus 4x the memory of Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku 3 for "exceptional speed and fluidity." And, yes, it delivers 1080p HD video and Dolby Digital Plus surround sound.

Looks like a good competitor to give Apple a kick in the pants and really imrpove ATV. I’m kind of annoyed apple has not made any significant feature improvements in so long. They could have added some kind of limited third party apps, and gaming is a no brainer!